29/03/2012 Hearts and Minds

Hello and welcome to the programme. Coming up this week. Will Edwin

Poots apologise for calling a fellow MLA a village idiot? We

offer him the opportunity. Is it arrogance and fear that drive

the Assembly to control the flow of information?

And, Mike Nesbitt tells us why he's the man to run the Ulster Unionist

Party. Coward, blackguard, git,

guttersnipe, hooligan, hypocrite, ignoramus, liar, pip squeak, rat,

swine, stool pigeon, tart and traitor, all terms of abuse that

have been deemed unParliamentary in the House of Commons. So when the

Health Minister, Edwin Poots called Keiron McCarthy a village idiot,

the party asked the speaker to take action. No retraction or apology

for the minister so far who's with me now. Are you guilty of using

unParliamentary language? That's for the speaker's office to judge

and obviously people have complain and we'll await the outcome. Do you

think you should be using such terms? Well, we are in the cut and

thrust of robust debate and certainly there's a lot of things

that were thrown about that particular day. Nothing like that?

That's the nature of it. You were accused of things like destroying

the Health Service but nobody called you any of the terms like

the ones I've thrown out? McCarthy said anybody with a brain

would have seen this was going to be a disaster, so the contagions of

that... William Hague, a member of your party, said that language in

Stormont would be judged against standards of courtesy, good temper

and moderation. Do you think calling someone a village idiot is

in line with that? Well, that's a judgment for the speaker. What I do

think is that the Assembly should be somewhere where people are

robust, where debate is strong, that it isn't a name, isn't boring

and doesn't lack colour and I leave nit the hands of the speaker's

office. You could of course pre- empt that by saying sorry for using

that language? Over the 14 years I've been an assembly member, I've

shown respect for the speaker's office, whoever holds that position,

and that continues to be the case. That's by the by though, nothing to

do with whether you should apologise. I leave the judgment to

the speaker's office. If he says you should do that, you will do

that? I will abide by the office. This is was about a debate by the

speaker's office. Mr McCarthy was just making some points about what

he saw and what other people see as the state of the Health Service. Is

it not a sign of you being perhaps more rattled than you would let on

to being that you could react in such a way to the criticisms which

are perfectly valid criticisms? would identify a lot of the

comments that were made by three individuals. The vast majority of

members made constructive comments. Some of them aren't happy with

certain aspects, but they were done in a very constructive way. So for

people like Mr Alastair, for example, to suggest that people

dying on a trolley was something new, it's not something new.

Something to be avoided even you would agree I'm sure? Absolutely.

Very sadly, over the course of the years in accident and emergency,

people come in there very unwell and over the period... And if left

untreated, they will die? People have died. Well, of course that

would be the case when people are not being left untreated. I would

like to make this absolutely clear to the listeners tonight. The

quality of care that people receive in our accident and emergency is

higher than it was previously. Whenever we are dealing with

situations where people have heart attacks, strokes, accept tus, major

trauma, we are getting better results in accident and emergency

than we ever were. Yes but... is where the real test lies.

real test lies in several hundred people waiting more than 12 hours

last month for care? The real test lies where people who're really

seriously ill can go into an accident and emergency and have a

fighting chance of actually coming out of that surviving and there's a

better chance for those people than there ever was before. But you know

that the response rate isn't high enough, you have asked for 95% of

patients to be treated within four hours. That's clearly not happening.

You will say it's 73 or 83, but you want it up more so it's not good

enough? No, I want it to be better but the test on quality is the

first Test that should be applyed to emergency departments and they

are passing that test. It's the same quality for everyone surely,

there should be an equality of treatment? I think someone who's

had a bad back for two or three weeks and had the opportunity of

going to their GP comes in, they shouldn't be seen in the same time

as someone who comes in with a heart attack. The person with the

heart attack needs treated immediately, the other person...

Isn't that what triage is for, that's what happens anyway and we

are not really arguing about that? If people have a sore wrist...

them wait? No, prioritise and save people's lives. That's not really

what the argument is about, the argument is about the 400 people

who waited more than 12 hours last month to be seen. That's not

acceptable according to the Assembly. Do you think it's

acceptable? Not to the public, not acceptable to the Assembly and it's

not acceptable to me. That was the very clear message I gave to the

Chief Executives and the chairs of the Trusts -- the Trusts. I made it

clear that in terms of the accountable system, the buck stops

with me, but the chairs are accountable to me and the Chief

Executives are accountable to the chairs. If the chairs and the

boards... You keep saying they haven't been in office a year yet

but a year is a long time in politics. If things have been

allowed to slip to this state, surely that is your responsibility.

You have to stand up and say, I am responsible for this. I would say

things are not slipping. I would suggest that we took over a Health

Service which had been allowed to descend into a shambles, and we've

carried out actions which will help put things right. Easy for you to

say, of course. Over the period of time, we will see improvements and

we are seeing them. Many times your party called for the resignation of

certain people, for example. You said he got �500 million extra,

what happened to it, you are the Health Minister, you should know

what happened to it? Sometimes we do ask rhetorical questions, but

far too much of it has been spent on wages and so forth and not

enough was spent on delivering. We need to ensure that every penny we

get in the Health Service is money that is well spent. We can't afford

to be wasting money within the health system. That's been the case

and we do need to drive out that waste from the system. The minister

has to take control and bring things back on an even keel before

public confidence disappears. That was your party talking about the U

ch P Health Minister, so you are not in exactly the same position oz

that now? No, I'm not -- UUP. like you are according to the

Assembly? No, I sat before the health mittty on Wednesday, very

constructive discussions took place and we are working very well

together. If we get two or three people in the Assembly who wish to

make a lot of noise, that's something that they can do.

took time to blame the media for this crisis, minister. You know

very well the media, certainly the BBC, has responded to desperation

calls from members of the public whose families have gone through

the most terrible events. We have heard from doctors of all ranks

who've gone through terrible events. There is a perception that there is

a state of crisis? No, I'm not blaming the media on anything.

you did in the Assembly? What I would be critical of is when the

media encouraged people to come to them... Why would we not, we bring

to you the problems of the nation? Exactly, you do bad news, not good

news. So if you say to people, if you have some bad news story in the

Health Service, come to us, you didn't say if you have good news

stories we'd like to hear about them, doctors and nurses doing a

great job saving life with exceptional skills, you didn't call

for that, so the media needs to be balanced in these issues. We have

issues and problems. I was in the Ulster Hospital in the accident and

emergency on Tuesday, they have 303 people in on Monday and last year

202, that's intense pressure but they are dealing with it very well.

I need to ask you about the review of cardiac care for children which

has started in the light of deaths of a number of children. Is that a

sign that something's seriously wrong there? Over the course of the

time, seven eight years, there were 68 operations carried out. They are

very difficult operations and three babies lost their lives. That isn't

that far from what the figures should be, 1 in 25, but nonetheless

they were in the last three years and we are investigating that.

I don't know why anyone is surprised by the cash for access

revelations in Tory party, or the fact that David Cameron's secretly

been having his rich donor pals over for crustless cucumber

sandwiches at Downing Street. Forget the cuddly, pseudo-

progressive stuff about supporting gay marriage, forget the fact that

Tory babe Louise Mensch, fresh from posing for GQ magazine in a tight

leather skirt and pussy blow blouse considers Cameron the most feminist

Prime Minister ever. You only have to look at the smooth posh faces of

Cameron, the old Etonian son of a stockbroker and George Osborne,

heir to a barron, to realise the truth. Despite their attempts to

detoxify the brand, the Tories remain the party of wealth,

entitlement and privilege. Still, at least politicians across the

water are compelled to be reasonably open about who's

bankrolling their parties. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK

where all identities of donors to political parties are kept secret.

Supposedly this is because of the unique security situation here.

There is a convenient and plausible sounding excuse, but I'm not

convinced that identifying donors puts them or their party of choice

at particular risk. The current arrangement allows

parties to say, oh, of course we'd love to be fully open, but we

simply can't, it's just too dangerous.

Once more, the get-away was pleading special circumstances, but

allow them to hold on to information that should rightly be

in the public domain. This is the culture of entitlement, Northern

Ireland style. Here, it's not about keeping power in the hands of the

wealthy privileged few, our politicians are more than rough and

ready types, sons of the soil, I can't imagine the likes of Edwin

Poots or John O'Dowd holding white tie champagne soirees. There is a

high-handed bent to distortment administration. For all the talk

about transparency, there is a clear attempt to hold on to and

control information. Brs placed under mild interrogation by

journalists squawk at the very outrage at being called to account

-- ministers. They comb plain that their noble work is far too

negative. Now the Northern Ireland Executive wants to charge people

for making a Freedom of Information request and we already know about

the absurdly large squadron of spin doctors up at Stormont, 161 at the

last count ready to shoot down any dangerous incoming inquiries. There

really is a sort of siege mentality up there, just look at that

paranoid memo from DCAL minister who said that the key consideration

for all media handling is that the implementation of an early warning

system is to ensure there are no surprises. The big difference

between the Conservative Party brand of entitlement and the kind

that prevails at Stormont is that the Tories are motivated by an easy

in-born sense of privilege. Here, it's down to a weird combination of

arrogance and fear. Either way, there should be no excuses about

being open, truthful and genuinely accountable to the people who place

them in power. Now, do you know what NEETs are? Not something you

eat with potatoes on burns night or an infestation from a primary

school. It's the acronym for youngsters not in education,

employment or training. Their numbers are growing and they are

costing Northern Ireland a quarter of a billion in lost productivity.

I do one day a week. Sounds like a good job. Anyone want to come up...

Meet the NEETs, these youngsters are between 16 and and in danger of

becoming part of a lost generation. There are currently nearly 50,000

young people like this in Northern Ireland, people not involved in

education, employment or training. That figure has increased by 10,000

since 2007. In the last six years, Northern

Ireland has seen the greatest increase in NEETs of any UK region.

It's an issue groups like this one, Opportunity Youth in Belfast, are

trying to address. We'll assess on paper in terms of looking at what

they need, to enable them to compete positively within the world

of work. A lot of young people work through the employment programme

and they have limiting self-belief in themselves and limited

aspirations for their future in terms of employment. For me it's

about letting them see they have qualities and skills that are often

hidden but often drawn out through the focus of our work which is

built upon a youth work manner. It's a problem for more than just

the young people themselves. This week, experiments from across the

world have been meeting in Belfast to offer solutions. The big issue

is, there's something like one in five young people between the ages

of 16 and 24 in this category. That from an economic point of view is a

huge waste of resource to have these people sitting when they

could contribute positively to the economy. We have done a bit of

arithmetic around it which suggests that if you count the lost

productivity from these people and you add in the benefits that they

get, it's something in Northern Ireland like �5 million a week that

it's costing the economy and you could do a lot in Northern Ireland

with �5 million. It could be that this presents an

opportunity... This isn't just a talking shop. This group are

discussing business ideas. Here is another way of looking at a

hair brain. This is my brain... One of the success stories is only

19 and thanks to the youth centre in North Belfast, she now works

with young people. It's the wee drop-in service and I called in

when I was 15-25 when I had nothing to do, was sitting in, playing pool,

Ping-Pong, TV, then I started volunteering, then they offered me

a job and got funding from the lottery and offered me a part-time

job nine hours a week and from then on I've been working there. So how

do young adults end up with no qualifications?

Basically I went to school for the first year then hardly went. I sat

my GCSEs and all but never done well. Chris is now retaking

qualifications, thanks to the Prince's Trust and Opportunity

Youth and he's opt Mickic about the future -- optimistic. I think it

will be all right. I'm doing a wee ICT course at night as well.

Through Opportunity Youth, I've got my ICT level two, so hopefully that

will open a few doors for me. young people in Northern Ireland

leave school with no formal qualifications and that needs to

change, according to the business community.

In Northern Ireland, we are sort of deluding ourselves about the

quality of our education system. We have got some brilliant education

institutions and outcomes in education, but our problem is, we

have a hugely long tail of under achievement where literally

thousands of young people are churned out of the system every

year who don't have enough to function properly in the labour

market. We need to fix that, if we don't, it's up.

Well, these are the men who can fix it. Both the first and Deputy First

Ministers attended the last day of the Conference, albeit separately.

Peter Robinson told delegates improving the economy for all was a

priority, but there was a risk some would be left behind.

While we have a policy programme for Government which is directed

towards growing our economy, there is a recognition on our part that

there are people who will continue to require support and we are

putting in place programmes such as our social investment fund, social

protection fund, to give assistance until we get the growth in jobs in

our economy. Martin McGuinness, himself a former

Education Minister, denied that the splits over selection were holding

the system back. There is a very important debate

taking place within education and there are different views and

opinions. The debate around education is very important. Out of

it will come a much stronger education system, much more equal

education system and I think, for example, the establishment of the

Education and Skills authority will be a very important contribution to

all of that. As far as we were talking this morning about the

opportunities for getting some work experience, what kind of... Back at

Opportunity Youth, despite the great weather, this group of young

people are persevering. Julia Paul with the NEETs.-he wants

to lead the UUP. The contest is at the weekend. Welcome to the

programme. Let's deal with that recent

membership of the party. You have been in politics for three years,

you want to lead the party, how could you possibly have the

experience to enable you to do that? The surprising thing, when

you think about the Ulster Unionist Party and the narrative that would

suggest that it's a party that likes to have people serve their

time and that usually is quite a long time, it's not an issue in the

party. You need 35 signatures in nine constituencys to be able to

stand with leader, I ended up with 94, certainly over 90, from about

15 constituency, and when you look at tt names and get people who've

been in the party a long time to look at the names, as I did, they

are saying, you are right across every alleged faction, every area.

Are you the desperation candidate? No. The mood has changed. This is

the surprising, and to some people, shocking thing about the UUP. Go

back 18 months when Basil and Tom sluged it out for the leadership,

there was a settlement in the party that we wanted a transition from

Reg to Tom. That's changed totally. People want change. You are not

offering change, just more of the same? I'm offering change all right,

I am. Where? There is no quick fix and that's the first thing to say,

no quick foix where we are as the UUP. -- fix. If there is a big idea,

it's not saying, let's get into bed with David Irvine, let's speak to

the DUP. If there is a big idea, let's concentrate on ourselves. We

are a unique party in Northern Ireland in terms of having around

2,000 members. That is a fantastic resource. In Fermanagh? What is

wrong with that? Slightly skews it all? Is that an issue to you,

because I think the Fermanagh south Tyrone membership would be insulted

that you are pointing at that. It emphasises there's a no-win

situation with the media because it used to have... Don't go start

blaming media! I'm not blaming the media, but you would have said

previously a few years ago, you have got a block vote and the

orange would have had this and that. We changed it and made it one

person, one vote and this's no good either because there are more

voters in Fermanagh. The challenge isn't to bash the people over the

head, it's to grow up the membership, it's to build up the

membership. You haven't told me where the change is in your

campaign and leadership? We need to be more cohesive as a unit and

coherent in the messages we offer. Nobody is going to vote for a party

which appears to be split which demonstrates ill-discipline,

particularly in the media, as we have done previously. We need to do

two things, one political, one organisational. In terms of

politics, we need better policies, better communicated, in terms of

organisation, a better resourced organisation. I can offer both

those things and there is nothing to beat hard work on the ground. I

came in a couple of years ago, stood in the Westminster election,

I had a campaign of six or eight weeks to convince people to vote

for me. I was up against a man who had 20 plus years service on the

ground, Noel, there was only ever going to be one winner. If we want

to get back to where we want to be... Plus you were standing for...

You seem to have abandoned that? have no problem with social justice.

I'm not, I would say, a natural Tory, if you are talking about

Thatcherer it policy, but social justice I would go with. Are you a

type of Tory? No, I'm not. The difficulty was, we had an electoral

pact with the Conservatives, rather than based on policy and politics.

We didn't unveil it particularly well, in my opinion. There were a

lot of logistical issues. Also, I would never give up our brand on

our name. We will stand as Ulster Unionists on our own flag. It's not

a flag of convenience, it summarises the values of service to

the public. Let me read you this, a vision of unionism threatening to

no-one, open to all in cooperation with our neighbours. Do you know

who said that? Was it me? Peter Robinson was to say that this

evening. What can you say that will beat that? It's not about words,

it's about delivery. You could have said it because you wondered if you

had, so it's something you could say? Oh, I could. What is the

difference between you? difference is in delivery. He's

said, for example, that he'd like a single education system. That is

our policy. He said he'd set up a commission. He said that over a

years ago. Where is the Commission? We will push through policies.

not an original policy, that is DUP policy, it's in the manifesto?

where is the delivery. The difference between us and the DUP

is that I want us to have a light touch Government. If you speak to

business people, they want to get rid of the red tape which the

Chamber of Commerce estimates has cost something like �2.4 billion in

recent years. If you speak to teachers, why not let them get on

and teach. If we went to university together to get a degree and went

back for the certificates to teach, it's not because we believe that in

ten years' time, we are going to be millionaires from working in the

classroom, teachers do it because thenl it's a vocation. Why can't we

design a system which moves from a higher accountability, low trust

regime to something which puts more trust in those who are volunteering

to to do this incredibly important job. You have pointed out a couple

of differences, maybe not significant some would say...

Compared to the control freakery of the DUP and Sinn Fein is a major

difference. All right. What is the defining characteristic or what

would be the defining characteristic of a Mike Nesbitt

Ulster Unionist Party? We'd have better policies better communicated

and a better organisation which would reach out to every pro-union

voter in Northern Ireland and we are coming up to the centenaries.

When we look at the environment, there's never been a better time,

Noel, never a better time to say to people, there is no reason not to

vote for us. There's no reason not to support the union, the economy

the country. Why would people not just to continue to vote for the

DUP, as they have done? Look at the DUP, there's a control freakery

about them, there is a similarity between the DUP and Sinn Fein. They

like to have tight control. You look at what is coming out of the

leisure industry, the ministers saying all the arms length bodies,

you cannot issue a news release without approval from my department.

I was in an arms length body, the Commission for victims and

survivors, I would not have tolerated an ofpz FM saying do not

put out a news release without our permission. What would you do with

David? When I heard the news this morning that he'd been suspended

for nine months, I was surprised because I thought it was a black-

and-white issue, you are either in or not. You look at David McNary.

The papers said 30 years ago he was criticising the then leader Jim

Mullin. I heard him on live television before the Southampton

result was declared, saying that... So you would have kicked him out?

cannot see any circumstances under which he would get my whip as party

leader. Would you kick him out if you were leader? It's not in the

gift of the leader to kick him in and out. McAllister thinks it is?

don't think he's right. The whole subject of opposition. John

McAllister has an idea to take the party into opposition to establish

a real identity for itself. You are going to refuse to do that or just

now? There is no opposition or mechanism. Make one? Form one?

would like to do that. I've called for one and you will have noticed I

said why not have a referendum and that was rejected by Peter Robinson

and the DUP have it in black-and- white that it's their policy to go

for an opposition. But not to have a referendum on it, they say people

vote for their thft, people know what they want? Yes, but they say

they want an opposition and I do, so we agree on the result. The only

argument is what mechanism to employ. Don't force the pace --

just force the pace? I've tried. Why doesn't Peter Robinson come up

with his alternative? He doesn't need to, it's you that's going to

form the new road? He seds he wants an opposition that's as black-and-

white as their policy. How will they bring it into effect. He wants

a commission on a single education system. Where it? It's up to the

DUP to come up with the idea? I'll press ahead and set up my own

commission if I'm leader and we'll look at all the structures of

Government. We'll bring in experts from all walks of life who'll tell

us in the best way to take our political journey to the next stage.

All the ins fusions -- institutions are finally up and running, we are

not going backwards and the next positive step forward is to get

closer to normal politics. weekend will tell. As always, we

say may the best man win. We are taking a break over Easter along

with the MLAs. We'll be back for the summer run in a fortnight. Bye.

Br Bertie Ahern branded a liar because he couldn't account for

�200,000 in cash. That would just buy you half an hour of a UVF trial